Taken follows Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) a divorced and retired CIA operative whose 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) wants to go to Paris but actually intends to follow band U2 around Europe. Arriving in Paris, Kim and her friend Amanda are victim to Albanian sex traffickers who stalk the friends, wanting nothing but to violate their innocence. Taken undoubtedly impacts on the viewer, the narrative has a good structure, and the audience are often left on the edge of their seat, victim to the gritty realism that strikes the teens on screen. The visual style to the film is gripping, often complementing the tone of the sex traffickers as something real and not to be messed with. The film, however, is often very linear, Neeson constantly strives to guess the Albanian's moves leaving the audience with no choice but to wait for the outcome of the film as opposed to an active engagement with the narrative itself.
From the actual kidnapping staged with Kim actually on the phone with dad to Bryan arriving in Paris and immediately causing a pileup outside the airport the film does not take a breath to allow a moment of reflect or psychological explanations for the antagonists motives, as the work in the film is all done for us. One is left wondering if the film was not located in France with rather unique cinematography, would Taken come across as a futuristic James Bond with Neeson as the masculine counterpart. Noticeably the film does contain a contradiction. The cinematography suggests a sense of gritty realism something that creates the tension in the film; whereas the action on screen, however, steps away from this realism, especially in the Yacht scene when Neeson fights off near enough every man on board, contradicting the somewhat practical atmosphere the film was trying to create. Overall, Taken is a satisfying contemporary thriller, adding a new angle to a well established genre, even if it has its flaws throughout.
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